Introducing your new eBird reviewer
So recently I was offered the position of eBird reviewer for the state of North Carolina. The previous reviewer was a grad student who, following graduation, decided to leave the state and needed to pass the job on. Like any good birder, I jumped at the chance.
I’ve been at it for about a week now, and I have a few observations. The first is the heady mix of pure power and responsibility that comes with the ability to confirm or deny other birder’s sightings. After all, they see what I tell them they see. Of course, I exaggerate and for the most part I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and as more experienced Carolina birders take to the system that gets easier. But there are a lot of birders in the state that don’t regularly use the listserve. EBird offers another means for them to get their sightings out.
Second, and I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but I never used eBird much before I took on this position. Sure, I added my rare birds to get them maximum exposure but as far as keeping track of every bird I’d see on a given outing, I was delinquent. When eBird was introduced, I never found it intuitive and had trouble figuring out how to use it. So I stopped.
But now that I’m in charge of accepting records, I’ve been spending a lot of time on eBird and really like what I’m seeing. Part of the problem in the early days was that not many birding hotspots were cataloged, it required a good deal of work to enter them every time. Now that eBird is more pervasive, many of the places I regularly go are in the database as hotspots and it’s much easier to add all of my sightings. And best of all, it’s easier to see those sightings accumulate along with others.
North Carolina is still relatively new to the eBird thing so many of the “hotspots” have incomplete bird lists and insufficient data of the birds that have been reported. But I’m making it my personal duty to make sure the hotspots, at least the local ones, have a more complete list of birds present, which really is the whole point of eBird, and I encourage my readers to do the same if you haven’t been already. It’s a way to focus my birding in lieu of big trips and rare bird twitches. After all, I’m likely to be birding closer to home, at least in the near future, anyway.
See? All it took for me to get on board was nearly unlimited power.
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Congratulations on your new position! I have two species now on the Missouri ebird. Yellow headed Blackbird and my continuing feeder birds, 2 Pine Siskins.
Congrats! Is it tough to do the whole state? I suppose we have a pretty big population of birders in NJ because we have a whopping 6 reviewers.
@dad- I encourage you to use it for your regular outings. You have some great places that should be considered “hotspots” in SW Mo. Like Palmetto and Red Bridge Rd. I’ve entered a lot of my old Missouri sightings that I could find into it.
@Patrick – It’s not so bad not since NC seems relatively new to the eBird thing. But if it gets more popular I can definitely see splitting the state into at least 3 sections for mountains, piedmont, and coastal plain.
Congratulations on the reviewer position! I agree with you that eBird has gotten a lot better than when it started. Just within the past year or two there have been some big improvements.
NJ needs a lot more reviewers because it’s squeezed between two top metro areas and has at least one major attraction for out-of-state birders. Given that the volume will be pretty high here.
Oh, dear, now I’m feeling guilty again that I’ve not entered my sightings.
It’s a good thing you’re doing, contributing to the world of science and of birding.
@John- I agree, it’s far more user friendly now. And one of the neat things about it, is that it becomes moreso simply by virtue of birders using it.
@Wren- I didn’t intend to make anyone feel guilty, but yeah, you probably should be entering your sightings. : )
Congrats, Nate! It’s a good thing you are doing!
Nate,
Congrats…big job..
I too use ebird..but like you I was using it just for rare bird sightings..